CE 132 GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING II

FIRST MAJOR EXAM

NAME: ___________________________________________________________ DATE: ___________________

DIRECTION: Read the exam rules. Answer all the problems below with total honesty and do
not cheat. Show all your solutions.

1. On a separate sheet is shown a foundation plan of a certain plant. The circular foundation
is a silo made of structural reinforced concrete of wall thickness about 300mm, with known
unit weight of about 27kN/m
3
, it is supposed to carry a certain substance up to about 1m
from the top cover, which is also a reinforced concrete of 300mm thickness. The substance
has a known specific gravity of 1.43. Just 5m from the outside diameter of the tank is a
control room with a mat foundation shown in rectangle, it is designed to carry a total of
3500kN of dead load including the weigh of the mat and about 2900kN of live load. The
footing was designed so that the applied force is transferred uniformly to the supporting
foundation soil. Some of the geometry is given on the same figure.
It is desired that the thickness of the silo foundation, which is a reinforced concrete
be at 1000mm thick to effectively transfer the loading to the soil uniformly, however this
should not be beyond 100kPa, the same requirement to that of the mat foundation, which is
about 350mm thick, with a unit weight of 23kN/m
3
.
The following assumptions are used in the design:
1. The soil above the level of concrete foundation is neglected in the analysis.
2. Unfactored load is used in determining the minimum area of the footing.
From the borehole logs, it was found out that the soil beneath the foundation is
composed of several layers of sand and clay. Just directly below the foundation it was
determined that the soil strata is sand about 4.5m thick with a dry unit weight of 15kN/m
3
.
2 meters below the level of foundation the water table has been observed, where the sand is
saturated thus with a unit weight of 18kN/m
3
.
The clay layer below the sand strata is composed of two layers of clay soil with
distinct properties. The first layer about 3m thick, normally consolidated clay with an initial
void ratio of 0.79, unit weight about 18.5kN/m
3
. The soil just below the first clay layer about
3.5m thick is an OC clay, with a pre-consolidation pressure of about 175kPa, as indicated in
the test, initial void ratio of 0.81, and unit weight of 19.2kN/m
3
. Use Cs = (1/6)Cc and Cc =
0.009(LL-10). Both clay layers exhibit a liquid limit of 41. It is also shown on the lab report
for consolidation, that about an estimated of 2 years time the primary consolidation ends.
The owner of the plant is concerned about the settlement of the structure at the end of five
years after it is fully operational. Determine the total consolidation at this time if C = 0.029.
To fully describe the total settlement, the owner and the structural engineer is
interested in total settlement of point A, B and, C so that the design of the structure can be
recalculated to involve such settlement. If you are the foundation engineer, provide the data
needed for this analysis.

2. Calculate the immediate settlement of the two foundations in the above problem if Es for
sand is about 10MPa, 11MPa for the first clay layer and 12MPa for the 2
nd
clay layer. The
Poissons ratio is 0.30. For the silo, evaluate the immediate settlement at the center of the
foundation, while for the mat foundation, calculate at the corner of the footing.